


Traumatised Disaster Bisexuals Anonymous

by the_empty_man



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast), Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: All podcasts are in the same universe, Crossover, Doug needs a friend who isn't an ex-colleague, Fluff and Humor, Gen, I am firm in my headcanon of the crew adopting aliases that match the names of their voice actors, I wrote this intending it to be platonic but you can read it as shippy if you want, Mark needs a friend who isn't one of his sister's patients, Renée becomes Emma etc, Spoilers for the whole of both shows, between my two fave podcasts, so Doug becomes Zach, trigger warnings for alcoholism and trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-19 00:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15498225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_empty_man/pseuds/the_empty_man
Summary: Doug Eiffel and Mark Bryant meet at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and discover how much they have in common.





	Traumatised Disaster Bisexuals Anonymous

If he was honest, Doug Eiffel didn't really think he needed to be there in the first place. After all, he didn't even remember what alcohol tasted like, so what was the point in him going to _Alcoholics Anonymous_? But he'd made the mistake of occasionally expressing curiosity about what it felt like to be drunk and once asking Isabel if he could try her beer (she'd given him a hard look and told him 'No’ in no uncertain terms). After that, Renée had decided he needed to go to _AA_. So he went. Not because he thought he needed to be there, but because it made Renée worry less. God knew she worried enough as it was. Besides, it got him out the house and amongst new people.

It was at Doug’s seventh or eighth meeting that he first encountered Mark Bryant. There were a few newcomers that day, but Doug particularly noticed Mark for two reasons. Firstly, he was wearing a faded graphic t-shirt featuring a whale in the colours of the Bisexual pride flag, with ‘Bisexuwhale’ written underneath. Secondly, with his messy black hair and impressive cheekbones, Mark was objectively very handsome. So perhaps Doug listened a bit more closely than usual when Mark stood up to share his experiences. As he listened, he found himself grinning to himself, even though Mark’s story had no right to be funny. Somehow, without trivialising it, Mark managed to make a hilarious anecdote out of a time when he’d drunk himself nearly unconscious in the company of two underage girls.

When the meeting ended, Doug walked over to Mark and introduced himself. “Hey, I'm Zach, Zach Towers.” He couldn't stop a slight smile at the last name he’d chosen. After they’d got back to Earth, the Hephaestus crew (except Hera, of course) had adopted new names. This wasn't too much of an adjustment for Doug, who only had a few months worth of memories of being called Doug Eiffel anyway. He felt as comfortable with the name _Zach Towers_ as the name _Douglas Eiffel_. To tell the truth, both names felt slightly like disguises, like he was pretending to be someone else, but they were better than being nameless. “I like your shirt **bi** the way,” Doug said, winking at Mark. “I’m always pleased to meet a fellow lover of puns.”

Mark glanced down at his shirt as though he’d forgotten what he was wearing, then smiled. He looked somewhat relieved that Doug’s conversation starter had been via puns rather than small talk. “I’m glad you like it. I had a bit of a **bi** lemma about whether it was suitable for this kind of occasion.”

“I suppose you didn’t know whether this would be a welcoming space or not. It could have gone either way,” Doug quipped back.

Mark chuckled. “In the end I decided to be a fashion **bi** oneer.”

“Oh, you think you’re so **bi** -larious,” Doug said.

Mark groaned. “That one was terrible.”

“Do you not find my puns **bi** witching?” Doug asked, mock-offended. They continued to exchange increasingly bad puns, laughing harder and harder each time, until Doug saw Renée walk into the hall. She made eye-contact with Doug and waved. “Sorry, Mark. I’ve got to go. My ride’s here,” Doug said.

“You ought to have ridden your **bi** cycle,” Mark said, grinning. Doug snorted.

“Bye **bi** then…” He started to walk off towards Renée. As an afterthought, he turned back to Mark and asked “See you next week?”, sounding much less nonchalant than he meant to.

Mark nodded. “See you then.”

******

 

At the next meeting, Doug thought Mark looked a bit less cheerful. There were bags under his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Doug asked.

“Yeah,” Mark said, half-heartedly. “My nightmares were particularly bad last night.” He said the last sentence almost as though he were talking to himself.

Doug thought about his own bad dreams and shuddered. Sometimes he dreamt of the minutes after he woke from the memory-wipe: Renée and Isabel passing out, Hera going offline, the spaceship shaking, the star burning bright and red, the certainty that he was going to die without any clue what was going on. Other times he dreamt of things that he didn’t remember actually happening. His nights were filled with horrible echoes from the logs and from stories he’d been told and perhaps even from a part of his subconscious that still held onto his old fears, despite the loss of the memories that gave rise to them. He’d grown used to waking from blurred nightmares of coughing blood and tight spaces and the terror that someone was going to kill the people he loved most.

“I know what it’s like,” he told Mark. “Some things are hard to shake. My house is like nightmare-central.” Mark looked at him, surprised. Doug met Mark’s wide eyes. In that look was the silent acknowledgement that they had both been through awful things, things they couldn’t properly explain, things they would never be able to escape, things that would haunt them forever. Mark broke the eye contact and rubbed the back of his neck. Doug felt shaky.

“Good old Repressed Trauma!” Mark said, with sarcastic cheerfulness and only a slight wobble in his voice.

“Ooh, bet your trauma isn’t as repressed as mine!” Doug joked. Mark looked confused.

****** 

 

“So the woman who picks you up… Is she your sister?” Mark asked. Doug almost spat out his squash. Mark looked slightly sheepish.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh,” Doug said. “I was just surprised. She’s my friend. Housemate. We used to work together.”

“Oh, I see…” Mark nodded.

“Why did you think we were related?” Doug asked, curious. “We don’t look alike.” Renée’s short stature and pale skin formed quite a contrast with Doug’s lanky tallness and visible Latino heritage.

“It’s a bit stupid really,” Mark muttered, not looking at Doug. “Just that… I don’t know… the look she gives you reminds me of how my sister looks at me.” Doug smiled at that. Maybe Mark wasn’t actually too far off. Renée  _was_ the closest thing he had to family.

“How does your sister look at you?”

Mark seemed to think for a moment. “Like she loves me. And worries about me.” He paused between sentences. “And doesn’t really trust me to look after myself.”

Doug laughed. “Wow that does sound like Emma!” (Emma Kalinski was Renée’s back-on-earth alias.) “Maybe she should meet your sister!”

******

“The other day, I went to that new waffle place round the corner from here,” Mark said when Eiffel asked what he’d been up to recently. “Have you been there? It’s _really_ good.”

Doug shook his head. “What’s it called? It’d be good to find out what waffles taste like.” There were so many experiences he hadn’t had yet since they got back to Earth. Perhaps he could drag Renée and Isabel on a group trip. They might even be able to get Jacobi to come along.

“What?!” Mark almost shouted, so that several of the other AA attendees looked round. Mark lowered his voice. “You’ve never had waffles?” he asked, as though he had just found evidence of a horrifying injustice.

Doug shrugged. “I don't remember.” In all likelihood, Eiffel had tasted waffles, but that didn't do _him_ much good now. “Well, you would not forget these waffles! They are unforgettable!” Mark said, enraptured. “I would be a negligent friend if I let you go another day of your life without experiencing them!” Doug couldn’t help but grin in joyful surprise at Mark’s casual use of the word 'friend’. Sure, Renée, Isabel and Hera called him their friend all the time, almost weirdly often. But all of the friendship-forming with them had happened to the person he used to be. In his life as Zach Towers, he had never made a friend before. “Do you fancy going for waffles now?” Mark asked. There was a pause. “Only if you're free. Don't worry if not.”

“No, that sounds great!" Doug said, meaning it. "I just need to call Emma, tell her she doesn't need to pick me up.” The call took longer than it should have done, because Renée was in concerned guardian mode. She asked Doug a quick-fire series of questions: _Where is this place? How are you getting there? What's this guy’s name? When will you want me to pick you up?_ Doug answered them in turn, giving Mark an apologetic look. Before he hung up, she told him “If anything feels off, anything at all, text me, okay?” Doug reassured her that he would keep her updated. Sure, she was overdramatic, but after all the times she’d gone through losing him, it was no wonder she was twitchy.

It turned out that the waffles at _Benny’s Waffles_ were the most delicious foodstuff Doug had encountered within his seven months of memories. “You were right,” he said after his first taste. “These are unforgettable.”

“Told you so,” Mark said, as he chewed happily. “So, tell me what you’ve been watching this week. Have you finished Firefly yet?”

Neither of them ever said _We should go for waffles every week after the meeting_. They never even said _We should do this again next week_. But after that first time, it just became an unspoken understanding that, come Tuesday evening, they’d be sitting in their regular booth, arguing about pop culture through mouthfuls of waffle and sauce and ice-cream. On those evenings, Doug wondered if this was what a normal friendship was like. Much as he loved his friendships that had been forged by fear of death, it seemed that a friendship forged by love of puns and waffles was pretty great too.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent far too long googling puns for this :)   
> Thanks so much for reading! It'd make my day if you could let me know your thoughts in the comments!   
> I'm @the-empty-man on Tumblr, feel free to join me there in my denial that these two podcasts have ended.
> 
> Stay tuned... Next chapter: these two disasters are going to tell each other their space and superpower-related secrets.


End file.
